Thursday, October 25, 2007

I was out having drinks with an old friend last night when he told me that for this business trip to Kuching, his company rented him a Proton Pesona. As skeptical a person he is, he actually complimented that the car exceeded his expectations towards a Proton, and asked me to test drive it after our talk cock session at the kopitiam...

a very decent improvement over the Gen2 on the interior/dashboard I should say... *pic taken from paultan.org*

so the test drive session came. The rented Proton Persona was the high end version with twin airbags. Interior wise, it's black and silver (refer to picture), way better than the beige colour of the Gen2 interior... gets dirty easily. The darker interior made the car looks classy, and the red illumination of the indicators is just nice. Green or white illumination would be crap... just my opinion...

I drove it out around the area, and found out that the sound proofing of the cabin was pretty good actually, and the suspensions soak up bumps and little potholes on the road with minimal effort. The ride and handling of the Pesona, to say the least is actually very decent. The default sound system of the car is also good enough.

Acceleration from gear one is abit slow and sluggish, but after that, the pick up is impressive. I floored the gas a few times, and the car effortlessly reach speeds of 130km/h and 140km/h. However, the power steering feels abit light to my liking...

Overall, I would say that Proton made quite some improvements in building the Proton Pesona, and it is a decent car with a reasonable price tag (in Malaysia). Plus, with low interest rates and longer repayment periods offered, I think this car should help patch up the market shares that it lose out all these while with crappy cars.